Irving R Levine
The hilarious softly spoken bow tied former NBC News reporter Irving R Levine died lat year , but a surprising twist in the man’s life has surfaced after his death. Via declassified FBI files, it seems that he deftly parried KGB attempts to blackmail him.
Levine, covered Economics in the 1970′s and 80′s for NBC News, he was also the first reporters to receive a visa to cover the Soviet Union in the 1950′s. And now with the Freedom of Information act, it has been revealed how the KGB tried to set him up, wanting to turn him into an informant and also the FBI taking a close look spying into his private life.
In 1955, when he arrived in Moscow to cover the Soviets for NBC, it was just more than a year later that he was approached by a Russian journalist that he had met through a friend.
The Russian he met over dinner one night told Levine how the Soviets could kick him out of the country easily, and then asked the journalist to provide information about “other American correspondents in Moscow, what they were writing about, what their thoughts were, how they felt about the situation in Moscow, and generally an analysis of their thinking.”
Once after realising that his dinner friend was working on behalf of Soviet intelligence, Levine denied the man’s request. He was then told to remain quiet about the request or be put at risk of being thrown out of the country.
Then only a few weeks later he was contacted again by the man, who asked him to meet with another Soviet, who would soon reveal himself as a KGB agent, at a Moscow Hotel.
When he agreed Levine was told through a translator that the requests made over dinner were mishandled, and that the KGB did not want him spying on his American colleagues, but they did want him to, “relate to them what the German, French, and Italian correspondents were thinking and writing.”
When again Levine refused the agent, told of a case where a UPI reporter had been kicked out of the country for a minor incident earlier that year. He then showed Levine a picture of Khrushchev from the New York Times, that some anti-revolutionary reactionary had defaced drawing a mustache on his face. The agent then said that is had been found in Levine’s office wastebasket, and would stand for an expulsion if he didn’t follow what they requested.
When Levine laughed off the photo and also denied responsibility, he then was shown a photocopy of a personal letter Levine had written to a friend in New York, which Levine had “repeated a joke which was then current in Moscow and concerned Josef Stalin.” Which the agent said, was “an insult to the memory of a Soviet leader, and could also result in Levine’s expulsion.”
Levine once again refused and accused the KGB of opening his mail.
This meeting was ended with the agent telling Levine he would be thrown out of the country if he revealed anything which had happened. Levine was met by the translator weeks later being told nothing would be happening to him, but after the meeting was under the impression he was being followed.
He was later contacted by a Russian student who after several requests, was giving the impression that he was trying to get Levine with entrapment and wrote a story for a broadcast about the scheme.
He showed the script to the Soviet sensors who rejected it, only to smuggle it to the bosses in New York for broadcast.
Levine returned to New York in 1957, and went straight to the FBI to tell them about his story.
The FBI in return spied on Levine with reams of intelligence reports about Levine’s private life including, wedding plans which appear to be based on a wire tapped telephone conversations.